Director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art 1955-1966 and head of
the U.S. army art recovery unit in World War II. Rorimer
was born to Louis Rorimer (1872-1939), a prominent interior designer and
teacher at the Cleveland School of Art and Edith Rorimer. The young Rorimer attended
private schools were he was especially interested in drawing and carving.
He studied in Europe before college for two years at the École Gory in Paris. In 1922 he returned to
the United States, entering Harvard University the following year. After
graduating cum laude from Harvard in 1927, Rorimer joined the Metropolitan the same year as an
assistant in the department of decorative arts. He was promoted to assistant curator
1929. Beginning in 1930, he
worked with Metropolitan curator Joseph Breck (q.v.) in planning the new medieval
extension to the Met, the Cloisters, advancing to associate curator in 1932. The Metropolitan was given four acres
of a sixty-acre parks donation by John D. Rockefeller for the construction of the
Cloisters. Rorimer was named Curator of Medieval Art in 1934 after Breck's
death and worked
with Charles Collens, the architect for the Cloisters, which opened in 1938.
He was named curator of the Cloisters the same year. An adept fundraiser,
Rorimer set about
developing the collections for the Cloisters. Aided
with further Rockefeller donations (including a 1952 gift of $10 million dollars
in securities) Rorimer built the collection of which the Cloisters is known
today.
These purchases included the Unicorn and the Nine-Heroes tapestries, the
sculptured tomb of Armengol VII, and the Pontaut monastic Chapter House as well as other
pieces of art and furniture. An early exponent of using ultraviolet rays to
examine painting, he published a book in 1931 Ultraviolet
Rays and Their Use in the Examination of Works of Art. He
married Katherine Serrell, a researcher at the Museum, in 1942. In 1943 he
obtained a leave of absence and joined the army as a private in the infantry,
quickly rising to captain, appointed as the head of Monuments, Fine Arts and
Archives Section of the Seventh United States Army, Western Military District,
known at the "Monuments men."
His chief responsibilities were the discovery and preservation of art treasures
hidden by the Nazis. His book, Survival: the Salvage and Protection of
Art in War (1950) details his experiences.
Rorimer was responsible for seizing the looted collections of Goering, Goebbels
and Alfred Rosenberg, among others. Returning to the Met, he was made
Director of the Cloisters in 1949. He succeeded Henry Francis
Taylor (q.v.) in 1955, eight months after Taylor's resignation in 1954.
During those years he acquired many of the works for which the museum is famous:
Raphael's Madonna of the Meadows, Rembrandt's Aristotle Contemplating
the Bust of Homer, and Robert Campin's Merode Alterpiece. He
worked to develop the Watson Library into the largest art library in the United
States. Attendance rose from 2 to 6 million annually. Rorimer
groomed a young assistant medievalist, Thomas Hoving (q.v.), whom he had heard
at a graduate conference, to be his protégé. This came sooner than he
thought. At age 60, Rorimer suffered a heart attack in his sleep at
home, though after a particularly contentious board meeting; Hoving
succeeded him the same year. His daughter, Anne Rorimer, is also an art historian.

Home Country: United States

Sources: Rorimer, James and Rabin, Gilbert. Survival: the Salvage
and Protection of Art in War. New York: Abelard Press, 1950; Dictionary of American Biography,
Supplement 8: 1966-1970; New Yorker 31, September 3, 1955, p. 19;
Dellheim, Charles. "Framing Nazi Art Loot." in, Kirshenblatt-Gimblett,
Barbara, and Karp, Jonathan, eds. The Art of Being Jewish in Modern
Times. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008; [obituaries:]
"James Rorimer of Metropolitan, Duncan Phillips, Collector, Die." New York
Times May 12, 1966, p. 1.

Bibliography: Ultra-violet Rays
and Their Use in the Examination of Works of Art. New York: Metropolitan
Museum of Art, 1931;
The Cloisters: the Building and the Collection of
Mediaeval Art.
New York: George Grady Press, 1938;
Mediaeval Monuments at the Cloisters as They Were and as They Are.
New York: The Plantin Press, 1941;
The Unicorn Tapestries at the Cloisters, a
Picture Book.
New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1946; and Rabin, Gilbert.
Survival: the Salvage and Protection of Art in War. New York: Abelard
Press, 1950.